Content Warning!
[Previous]
[Next]
Chapter 18: Phase Four
The next morning, Phyr awakes in his bed with a start, and notices that someone is in his room. He leaps from under the covers and prepares to fire a Mana Beam, then sees it’s a bellhop with a suit of clothes, holding them like a shield and cowering behind.
“Just some clothes, Lord Ragnarok! Mister Nadab requested you wear these today.”
Phyr lowers his hands and says, “OK, what do I do with my old clothes?”
“I can take them to the laundromagic for you, sir.” The bellhop stops cowering and recovers his composure, straightening up to look Phyr in the eye. “Just leave them anywhere.” He hangs the suit in an open closet near the bathroom door and bows.
“Hey, hang on,” Phyr says, picking up his pants and pulling out some bills.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary, sir,” the bellhop says with a knowing smile. “I work for Mister Nadab. I never need to open my wallet in this city.”
“But what if you want to go on vacation,” Phyr asks, handing over a ten.
“Then Mister Nadab arranges for all-inclusive accommodations and gives me a travel stipend, sir.” He raises his hand flat, in protest.
Phyr narrows his eyes, and the bellhop smiles nervously. “Y’know, for the incarnation of greed, he sure seems pretty generous.”
“That he is, sir.”
“What do you think of that,” Phyr asks.
“I think it’s not my place to question such a generous employer.”
“Sure, but I’m not asking you to rebel or anything. I’m asking for what you think, at the end of a long day, when you’ve had a couple drinks.”
“Between you and me, sir, I think Mister Nadab is tremendously generous to all in his employ, and only appears greedy to outsiders.”
Phyr nods thoughtfully and says, “Yeah, seems that way to me, too. Right, so - I’m gonna take a shower now…”
“Of course, sir.” The bellhop nods and exits.
Within the hour, Phyr is showered, fed, dressed smartly in a charcoal suit with a cream silk shirt and emerald cufflinks, and back at headquarters for the first day of his “orientation,” such as it is. He enters through the glass door and sees Nori seated at her desk, and - wait, Nori is standing next to her desk, and a nearly identical blonde elf is in her seat. “Good morning, Mister Ragnarok,” Nori says, smiling at his double-take. “This is Tamment Belkacem, one of my backups. Mister Nadab has asked me to see to your orientation myself.” She stands upright and walks to him, heels clicking on the polished concrete in syncopation with his own leather-soled shoes.
“Do they all look almost exactly like you,” Phyr asks.
“Mister Nadab likes to provide continuity for his clients, and I am the most high-profile of his outward-facing representatives,” she says briskly as she leads him to a hall at an equally brisk pace. “A great deal of his operations come down to optics: what you’re doing usually matters much less than how it’s seen.”
Phyr mutters under his breath, “Fuckin’ Dee could take a page outta his book…”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” Phyr says. “He just reminds me of someone from another world.”
“Ah.” Norissiel nods knowingly, though whether this is genuine understanding or mere politeness, he cannot tell. “Today’s agenda is an overview,” she says after a pause. “I’ll outline the structure of Big Money, share Mister Nadab’s mission and vision - the version he shows to the world, and the version he keeps between himself and his division heads. Then after a quick jog through the numbers, we’ll have lunch, and the afternoon will be Electro-mana Transformers 101.”
“Dear God, what have I signed up for,” Phyr says with a sigh as he screws up his face and pinches the bridge of his nose.
Thusly, he is seated with Vector at the Gilded Lily, three weeks later. Phyr is wearing what has come to be his “work uniform,” the charcoal suit with the emerald cufflinks, and Vector wears a grey suit with a black button-down and red necktie to match his ruby cufflinks. They nosh on pommes frites with various dips as they drink and catch up. “And, like, OK - building a corporate empire in a world where magic exists is actually pretty interesting, but holy shit, everything around it was boring as Hell,” Phyr wraps up. He looks across the table to Vector and knocks back what’s left of his second drink. Then he says excitedly under his breath, “And did you know that Nori comes from a family of secret ninjas living out East in the mountains? Her and her cousin, Indigo!”
“She works for the troll gangster in Leetsburg, right? Runs that casino?”
“Yeah, ‘Fools Rush Inn.’ Makes you wonder who else is a secret ninja, dunnit?” Phyr waggles his eyebrows suggestively as he takes a fry.
“I think that’s the point,” Vector says flatly.
Phyr shrugs and says. “So how’d things go with that necromancer?”
“It was another Stewart, all right. Tougher than the last two. But I got to the bottom of it, and true to his word, Edric on-boarded me. Alice still won’t play ball, which - her loss, I guess.” He takes a fry and washes it down with a long pull from his cider. “I’m getting the hang of using my powers in the middle of things, though.” A server brings Phyr another whisky sour.
“Thanks,” he says with a smile before turning back to Vector. “How’s that going?”
“It’s weird - like, when I alter my Informedness, I can feel information entering and leaving my mind. It’s kinda the same when I change my Nimbleness or Buffness, but physical. Gentility is like a weird drug that somehow makes you more articulate, and Ardency - oof, I don’t know if that’s what cocaine feels like, or just when you get religion in a hard, bad way.” He takes another pull from his cider. “How’s the Master Plan coming along?”
“Good,” Phyr says, taking a sip. “I got him to the end of Phase Two - automating the controller for the water wheels - and now we’re in the middle of Phase Three, which is worldwide distribution.”
“That easy, huh? Did any units get to Salinas?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to raise the issue, since he doesn’t know I was there, but I snuck a look at a few manifests and at least one shipment was bound for Salinas. It’s got the tidal mod I designed, so they can just place it anywhere the mechanism will be submerged at all times, and that should help ‘em out.”
“Good, good,” Vector says with a nod, grabbing another fry. “What’s next, then?”
“Oh, right! So that mystery tunnel? It goes to a shield generator project. Part of why the controller had to be so efficient. Basically, it uses a little power to make a magic shield to protect the property. I mean, a little genny in a creek could only shield itself, but the point is that places with water wheels will be protected.”
“Is he… expecting the war to come here?”
“No, no,” Phyr says hastily, a fry in his mouth. He swallows and adds, “This whole province is like a natural fortress: cliffs to the North, mountains to the East and South, giant waterfall to the West. No way you could march an army up without wagging your ass all over the place.”
“What?”
“What what?”
“Wagging your ass?”
“Haven’t you heard that expression? It means, like, ‘exposing your weakness’ or something.”
“That’s a new one on me,” Vector says, and he polishes off his cider. He slides his glass to the edge of the table and looks for a server, but one is already on the way. Vector nods to him and takes a fry, then says, “So what’re all the shields for, then?”
Phyr shrugs. “Better safe than sorry?” They munch on the fries for a bit as the conversation lulls. “Anyway, I wanna talk him into running a tournament or something when we kick off Phase Four. I haven’t knocked heads with anyone in a while, I got the itch.”
Vector nods thoughtfully. “You gonna run it Alice’s way? Or go balls out?”
“Alice’s way,” Phyr says. “At the very least, it’ll be a show of good faith to her. But I was thinking - tournaments are basically the only sports in this world. And, like, who cares what you can do with a ball when bloodsport is on the table, right?”
“Team sports are just war analogues, anyway,” Vector says with a shrug. “Makes sense that Dee would distill that back down to its essence. More honest that way.”
“That, and she loves fighting. Like, she hates needing to fight, but she gets ‘the itch,’ too. She told me once that when she’s in a fight, it makes her feel alive in a way that nothing else does... and she’s scared of herself over that. So honoring that tradition - and doing it in the Old Guard’s way, with rules and such - seems like it’d be a good thing to do.” Vector nods at this, and takes another drink while Phyr eats a fry. “Plus,” he says with his mouth full, then swallows, “It’s a power move for Edric: ‘Hey, look at me, I can run tournaments just like Rayla and Aqu’,” - there’s a murmur of Gods rest their souls from a nearby table - “Yeah, gods rest their souls. But it shows in a real way that he’s ready to take up the mantle, and puts the other Influences on the defensive.”
Vector looks around as he sips his drink, and asks quietly, “Is it really a good idea to be talking about all this in the nicest bar in town?”
“It’s fine,” Phyr says. “Everyone here is somehow connected to Edric, they’re all good people, or at least bad people on his side. And I haven’t said anything mission-critical, ‘cuz I don’t know most of that stuff. Edric’s been real tight-lipped about Phase Four, but I think it has something to do with that shield thing.”
“Hm,” Vector intones through a mouthful of fry.
“Any word from that girl who keeps invading your dreams?”
“Not since we first woke up in Altilluvia. But I’ve been on edge ever since we got here, and she only seems to show up whenever I’m super-relaxed.”
“Makes sense,” Phyr says. He sips his drink, and they turn to small talk.
[Next]
No comments:
Post a Comment